Sunday, March 20, 2011

The first thing I do when I get up is laundry. I don't do one or two loads a week like most people. I wait until I'm out of something and do 3 loads at once. Thus creating a backup in our laundry chute.

I then tackle our grocery list by finding meals to make for the next week.

We decided to head to the West Bank's best crusty punk-breakfast joint, Hard Times. The food here is pretty rad as you can see, as is Riverside Plaza (aka Little Somalia), which is just a hope skip and jump down the road. I recently told someone that Minneapolis is characterless; this neighborhood bucks that trend. The combination of divey bars, college kids, breakfast co-ops, Somalis and the Wienery give this decaying neighborhood all the character in the world. Let's hope that the impending Central Corridor LRT development and the U's propensity to expand don't change this.

We needed to get some things at Menards. A trip to the hardware store is becoming a weekly habit. We looked for probably an hour for a new ceiling fan for our bedroom. We don't do air conditioning and with summer coming up a fan is much needed. After all that time looking we didn't find any we really liked.

We did find a new light fixture. I was impressed by Menards selection of lighting. From when I worked there a few years ago I remember everything being very generic so it was nice to see some new items.

After 2 hours at Menards we then headed over to the Seward Co-op to get groceries.

I've always wondered what people think when we roll up to the checkout with that big cart of groceries. The average co-op shopper seems to get what they need for that day or buy a little snack. Brooke and I are old school: we bring our own reused jars, fill 'em up and that ends up being most of our load, besides produce. Brooke's sis Chelsea recently opened our kitchen cabinets at home and said, "All you have is ingredients and not food" or something to that extent. That's the way we like it.

Sushi is on our menu this week which uses ingredients like kampyo. Luckily there is an awesome Asian supermarket in town that carries almost everything you can think of.

See this big pile of snow. Underneath all that is our garden. It's the only pile of snow left in our yard. I hope it melts before May.

Anytime we bring home a plastic bag, which is rare, Peanut dashes across the room and immediately starts chewing on it.

As I've said many times in the past, this is why Peanut, despite his size, is a pipsqueak.

I finish up the laundry while Scott heats up dinner.

Lasagna Bolognese from the Italian food bible, the Silver Spoon. The photo I was taking turned out pretty horribly. That's life.

The strange shadows on Scott is caused by our new light fixture.

It took us almost four hours to put this bugger up Saturday night. Earlier that day I biked to the North Loop and picked up Twins tickets before they all sold out. I eventually ended up at Mohn Electric in Uptown. The Mr. Mohn helped me build the pendant portion that would hold the sphere in place. He was a life saver. For less then $100 we got the sphere from Patina and the pendant from Mohn. Now we have a fixture that is uniquely us.

The main reason we went to Menards was to get new outlet covers. It was at this point that Scott realized we didn't get any, instead we got switch plate covers.

Our boring day of running errands ends by going over to our friends housewarming party. They had Arnie Palmer cocktails, which I think may be my new favorite drink.